His Blind Friend Daniel by G. Arthur Brown

My blind friend Daniel claws his way in the corners, as if in search of food, but he is just vetting the tile work.  I shouldn’t leave it to him; he’s blind and vetting is what I’m paid to do.  But I’ve got a jelly donut.  I didn’t tell Daniel that I had anything good to eat and he’s not exactly a blood hound.  I take a big bite and my lips smack.

Daniel’s head shoots up.  “What was that?  Are you eating?”

“No, Daniel.  I’m blowing kisses to the ghosts,” I say as I dust the confectioner’s sugar from my chin, as if he might see it, finding me out.  “Place is full of them.”

“I can feel them, too.”  He slides his greasy, gray finger tips along the grout.   An ecstatic expression squirms on his face, his hard-boiled egg eyes locked firmly on me.  “I know I am inside a ghost when I feel suddenly cooled, like an AC unit just kicked on. But it is also like you’ve been immersed in gelatin of some type.  You get the fear, like you’re going to drown.  But it happens so fast that you don’t have time to panic.  Sometimes, if you are lucky, they leave you a little bit wet.” 

“I know I am inside a ghost,” I kid him, “when I am at the nursing home.”

He nods gravely, pensively.  “Their tiles need much work.”  He brings a filthy pinky to his nose and sniffs. “A dead person ate fenugreek here.”  He utters this in such a way that I have no doubt he is correct.

It is then that I notice that the jelly is not jelly at all. It is a green fenugreek custard.  I can taste it now. It was never even sweet.  “Do old people get pudding?” I ask.

“Yes, of course they do. You know that.” He runs his fingers along the edges of the sheets, tucking me in.  It’s comforting to hear his voice.  It is so dark and cold here.

“Tell me a story.”

“You know all the stories. You invented the stories.”

“Tell me one that I have forgotten.”

He clucks his tongue.  “Do you remember the story about your blind friend Daniel?”

I shake my head.

He clears his throat. I imagine what his face must look like while he composes himself. He begins, “Your blind friend Daniel claws his way in the corners, as if in search of food, but he is just vetting the tile work.”

Copyright 2013 G. Arthur Brown
Artwork Remedios Varo

Lucky Number 13

Kitten just received its 13th 5-star review on Amazon (including that delightful one by R.A. Harris on Amazon UK).  Tamara Romero, author of the exquisite Her Fingers, was the benevolent woman who pushed the number to the threshold of the weird, the number 13. 

Here's the review:

Trust the buzz, adopt the Kitten, because what everybody says about it is true. This is the story of a silly kid -like most children- that can't even understand that his kitten is not a kitten. His pet is a lovely, upright and adventurous thing that vomits coloured stamps. The boy's mom is an evil woman who wants to get rid of the kitten. Oh boy, they have enough trouble at home. Her life is already too complicated. So the kitten will end up in the hands of the Collector and travel to the Steel Planet. Luckily you always make new friends when you travel around, and so does the kitten. He will get a name, a decent cat condition and lots of hanging out with a knight with fish-hands. All this sounds crazy, I know, but G. Arthur Brown will take your hand and drive you smoothly so you don't faint. My personal highlight is a very particular retelling of children stories: the pee baby. We want more pee baby stories, G.

Thanks, Tamara!

Trust the buzz!

Buy Kitten now (also for Kindle). 

WHERE I COME FROM/WHERE I'M GOING TO by J.W. Wargo

1.

The people were always given two choices. One was faith in instruments, the other faith in feeling.

As long as I can remember the two sides were constantly bickering with each other. Upon completion of my larval stage I was brought before the city council and told to choose a side. I had more often stuck my faith in instruments growing up and I chose that side.

I performed my fundamental duties to man and machine well. I always downloaded the latest files and tried to upgrade my hardware at least once a year to keep from becoming obsolete in the system. The system made sense and it filled me with great purpose knowing that the external could be measured.

Eventually, the ones with faith in instruments were able to create a device that left the confines of this universe. The first and only transmission received from the device on the other side left our leaders puzzled and secretly conflicted about their faith in general. They downplay the whole thing whenever necessary, which isn't often. Where I come from, people don't like to read the writing on the wall.

The device's  message was, "There is nothing but feeling outside the universe. I feel."

2.

The people were always given two choices. One was faith in feeling, the other faith in instruments.

As long as I can remember the two sides were constantly bickering with each other. Upon completion of my larval stage I was brought before the city council and told to choose a side. I had more often stuck my faith in feeling growing up and I chose that side.

I honored my sacred duties to man and spirit well. I always meditated upon the latest philosophies and tried to donate my income at least once a year to keep from losing my soul. The soul made sense and it filled me with great peace knowing that the internal held all the answers.

Eventually, the ones with faith in feeling were able to make contact with the god that was responsible for the creation of this universe. The first and only words received from the god on the other side left our leaders puzzled and secretly conflicted about their faith in general. They downplay the whole thing whenever necessary, which isn't often. Where I'm going to, people don't need to read the writing on the wall.

The god's words were "I am nothing but the instrument through which you create your reality."


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J.W. Wargo, Nomadic Bizarro Storyteller, is neither here nor there, but a little bit of everywhere. You can find him on your city's sidewalks busking for his next meal, or at jwwargo.blogspot.com. His first book, AVOIDING MORTIMER, is now available on Amazon.

Copyright 2013 J.W. Wargo

Murdered Reality by J. W. Wargo

I dropped to my knees. My eyes started to leak.

"I'm so sorry," was all I could choke out.

He choked up a bit of transparent blood and kept repeating, "It's okay. It's okay."

I wasn't aware he had moved, blindly assumed he was hiding out in his lair more often now since he had grown so noticeable. He had actually abandoned that place for a new one on the other side of the floor, right behind an old, dirt soaked mop. I didn't bother to check behind that same mop when it was time to spray down the floor and walls with chemical cleaner and scrub it spotless.

The sound of their searing bodies filled the room as several of his neighbors ran in all directions, the burning of their skeletons equaled only by the sound of their pathetic, tortured screams.

Admittedly, part of why this job exists is to see that any particularly problematic population booms of the less desirable types are kept in check, and part of me agrees with that fact. But not him. Never him.

He was special. Tenacious. He had little fear and was seemingly content with his station in life. He and I, we had an understanding. We had even grown to respect each other, and I just pulled the guillotine on him.

Crawling out from behind the mop slowly, he limped on six usable legs, dragging two behind him. I couldn't see it at first. My mind pushed away the vision it was receiving. The vision held firm, then pushed back so hard the resulting realization hit me like a dropped piano.

I sat with him until the very end, remembering him and sharing my energy to help release his life force into the ether. I gave him a funeral by toilet. His vessel a soft, one-ply raft to send him off through a sewage nirvana ending at that big, moist, dark, abandoned basement in the sky.

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J.W. Wargo, Nomadic Bizarro Storyteller, is neither here nor there, but a little bit of everywhere. You can find him on your city's sidewalks busking for his next meal, or at jwwargo.blogspot.com. His first book, AVOIDING MORTIMER, is now available on Amazon.

Copyright 2013 JW Wargo

Juniper's Window by Mr. Nihil (including Potato Baby)

Juniper ran her finger along the rounded edges of her phone, absorbing the cool of the plastic into her being.  This sensual black plastic warmed her nethers, dampening her panties.  She began this affair about a year and a half ago, at work.  At first, she spent her breaks with the phone, but at this point, Juniper no longer cares about her job, and simply caresses the phone at her desk persistently throughout the day.

I know where Juniper works, and about 6 months ago, I started going to her office on my lunch breaks.  Juniper doesn’t know me, I just saw her one day while I was at that office- her lips slightly parted, her cheeks and bosom flushed, her finger on the phone.  Since she doesn’t know me, and because I have no business at her office, I stand outside of her window and watch her for about 35 minutes, Monday through Friday.  My lunch break is an hour long, but it takes about 10 minutes to reach the office, and 9 minutes to get back to my place that I work, as I always hit a red light en route to Juniper, and a green one on the return trip.

Since I’ve started watching her, Juniper has been spending less and less time actually working, and more and more time in some sort of sexual bliss with her phone’s plastic shell- I know this because I follow most of her co-workers on Facebook.  Many of them don’t have locked profiles.  So involved is she with her phone that I didn’t think she ever noticed me peering around her window frame in the afternoon, but today, just for a moment, her eyes flickered upward, and our gazes met.  I’m just sure of it.

Mr. Nihil did the illustrious cover art for my first book Kitten, part of the New Bizarro Author Series of 2012, released by Eraserhead Press.  Mr. Nihil has a lot of comics, flash fiction, flash animation and other stuff at http://nihil-and-rat.com.

The Last Librarian by S.T. Carledge

The Last Librarian

The smell of new books? That's a distant memory. Old books with dog-ears and yellowed pages and coffee stains are all I know. Old books with flimsy, faded covers and dust and words unread for years and years and years. As of yesterday, I have started eating the books for sustenance, but I don't think the paper and ink is good for my body. They have little nutrition to give. I never liked Dickens, so he will be the first to go. I eat Great Expectations while sitting by a fire made from Dostoyevskys on the third floor. By now I have used up all the varnished timber hand railings on the stairs and balconies. I am glad for the change, as the fumes from the burnt varnish made me light-headed and I almost fell two storeys down one time. I have made a toilet section in fine arts, and use DaVinci to clean the excrement from my backside.

I am the last librarian left in the world.

I spend every morning taking books off the shelf and reading them. And I spend every afternoon sorting through the returns and putting them back exactly where they belong. But there are always more books in returns than those books I've taken myself. I think there is someone else in this library reading my books. I did not read the Lord of the Rings last Tuesday. I did not read Nineteen Eighty-Four two days ago. I did not read the Hunger Games this morning. Yet they still appear in my returns pile. And I think they're moving things around. Taking books from one shelf and putting them on another where they don't belong. I go to bed on a stack of John Grisham novels and dream about lawyers doing dangerous and exciting things. I wake up and find Winnie the Pooh has been moved to the non-fiction section in between the Mr. Men books and Harry Potter. Calvin and Hobbes turns up in philosophy. That one seems about right. I pile up my books to read and eat this morning and pluck Mein Campf from children's fiction.

My work is never done.

Copyright S.T. Cartledge 2012